


An Unexpected Alliance

by fairytalehearts



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:52:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3260660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytalehearts/pseuds/fairytalehearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While looking for Ward the team finds... The Winter Soldier. I wrote this after the AoS finale.  Doesn't take the new season into account.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unexpected Alliance

Someone was blowing up HYDRA facilities.

Skye was convinced it was Ward, May agreed. Maybe, just maybe there was something human left inside of him. Something that cared about them. He wasn’t trying to get back into their good graces but maybe he had his own reasons for revenge.

They figure out where the next lab is and  they took a vote. Capture Ward alive and pray that he had something he could exchange for Coulson’s forgiveness, something high-level and potentially dangerous. They go with Nite Nite guns without telling Coulson and by some twist of fate she ends up shooting Ward in the back of the head, his body falling to the ground with a sickening thump.

“Jemma! Nice Shot!”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell Skye that she had caught a reflection and shot prematurely in the darkness. May goes to check his body and she already had her apology planned out. She would say it to his unconscious body so if he was still evil then she wouldn’t feel even angrier for potentially giving him a concussion.

But they didn’t find Ward, they found the Winter Soldier.

**

“He’s been locked away in his office for almost an hour.” Fitz pointed out; the three of them slouched in the hallway outside of his door. May had decided to go through all of their guest’s gear and intel in the conference room.  Which was probably the more efficient move. Sometimes Jemma felt like they were the kids on the proverbial bus, but if she was going to get in trouble from Captain America for potentially killing his best friend she wanted to know firsthand. Skye had every feed imaginable locked on the holding cell, her tablet in her lap while she and Fitz debated whether or not spying on the Director of SHIELD was worse than snagging Bucky Barnes on accident.

Alarms started going off all over the ship, May with a gun cocked already was headed in their direction.

“We’re being boarded!” Skye swore before pounding on the door to Coulson’s office, tablet long discarded on the floor. Jemma examined the holding area, James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes, simply pulled his weight up into some weird hop and then used the planes momentum to slide towards the door.

Something crashed into the ship and if the hammer whizzing past her face wasn’t a clue-

Tony Stark walking out of Coulson’s previously locked office door would be.

“Pepper wanted to come but seriously, Phil, once you owe Cap a favor you really owe him.”

May shot at Tony before he passed the threshold, the Nite Nite dart hitting his suit with a dull thunk. “Stark.”

"Cavalry.”

“You can’t call her that! Sir. Mr. Stark.” Fitz was quick to come to their teammates defense but suddenly remembered who they were talking to.  “This was a two man op, tops. What gives?”

Natasha Romanoff. In jeans and a t-shirt headed towards their living quarters. “All of the “men” in my life are a bunch of children and when we told Thor that Coulson was alive he had to come with. Where’s your lab? That one brought presents. I’m taking a nap while we refuel.” May motioned for her old friend to follow her towards their cubicles.

A woman gave them a small wave. “Thor, sweetie, please be careful. Your father will kill me from Asgaard if I break his soul forge.”

The “soul forge” was in a huge box that floated over the ground and if Fitz’s brain wasn’t already working a mile a minute it was now.

“I feel like this a joke that is coming to life.” Skye whispered, shaking Thor’s hand, while the woman, Jane, introduced herself. “Thor, Black Widow and Iron Man walk onto the bus-”

As awestruck as Skye was at meeting her “idol” she was just as shocked to meet Dr. Bruce Banner. “I read your dissertation. Good stuff. I’m apparently here to work while Tony postures with Phil. I’d love to see your lab and what you’re working on.”

Bruce Banner. The Hulk. One of the most brilliant scientific minds in the world wanted to see her lab. Bloody hell this was an odd day.

Fitz screaming from the lab jolts her back to reality, “THAT’S WHAT A SOULFORGE DOES?!”

Coulson finally emerges from his office, Captain America in tow. “-And besides asking for you the minute he woke up- that’s all I know. Which I was going to tell you before you boarded my plane.”

“We were in the area.” A new voice explained taking one glance at her and smiling. “Name’s Falcon. Sam Wilson. Newest Avenger.”

The chorus of “No’s” that erupted from the ship were astonishing.

“Come on Sam. The nerds will be doing their thing for days. I have a secure uplink for you to catch up on that paperwork you’ve been neglecting.”

Sam followed after Coulson and Mr. Stark, leaving her alone with Captain America.

“Hi. My name’s Steve. People tend to call me Cap”

“People tend to call me Simmons.” Jemma smiled, “I’ll take you to Captain Barnes’- room.”

She could tell he wanted to ask how he was- mental state, physical state she wasn’t sure. He seemed pretty lucid when he woke up, but master assasins tended to be good at portraying whatever they wanted. Skye had been snooping on the secure server again, but when you come across a video of Captain Bloody America asking for understanding if anyone were to come across the Winter Soldier- that was something you didn’t forget.

She unlocked the door, and he was sitting there as if he’d always been unchained.

“Did the doll tell you she was the one to take me out? Misfire. Reminded me of you back in the day, Steve.”

She promises both of them she won’t tell anyone she saw Captain America cry.

The Avengers stay on the ship for four days. Thor almost eats them out of house and home, and if it weren’t for the insistence of one Pepper Potts they probably would have stayed longer. Fitz hadn’t left the lab in days, this Soul Forge consuming all of his time and energy. Even trying to help him proved unsuccessful. It was hundreds of years past them and they had barely cracked the surface.

Her time with Dr. Banner was more than enlightening. He was patient and gave her all of her files on the Super Soldier Serum and theories as to why he turned into the Hulk and not a six foot muscle man.

“Why are you giving me all of your highly classified research?”

“Captain Barnes is staying. So is Dr. Foster.” Coulson explained later at dinner. “We need to keep ahead of Hydra and the best way to do that is to have one of their own against them. We want Dr. Foster’s alien technology kept under wraps and the best way to do that is on the Bus.”

 So while the A-team may have left them with two extra mouths to feed, maybe being on the B-team wasn’t so bad afterall.

“James-”

“Call me Bucky.” He insists, helping Jane load the last of her things onto the plane. They had stopped in London to get her equipment and perhaps watching her kiss Thor was a little beneath her but it was quite romantic.

“James. Coulson has asked me to do a full workup on you whenever you’re available. Is 20 minutes amiable?”

He looks different with the sun setting behind him. The much needed haircut made him look much younger than before and if it weren’t for the rather obvious metal arm she could almost forget about the Winter Soldier business.

“You really are British, aren’t ya, Jem. I’ll be in the med lab in ten.”

No one ever called her Jem. Not growing up. Not at the Academy . She made it to her lab in five minutes and he was already there, undressing. The ship took off and he had the gall to pretend to be embarrassed when his weight pressed against her after a patch of turbulence.

“You are a cheeky thing aren’t you? I take my position as medical liaison seriously on the Bus and if you have so little respect for my profession and skills then perhaps I should be having a conversation with Director Coulson about moving your things back to the holding cell. You are here at his leisure, after all.”

He gently extracts his limbs away from hers and sits down on the table. Smiling.

“Well, out with it.” She insisted.

“I like a challenge.”

Opening her mouth to tell him off yet again, instead the turbulence knocks her off her feet, his metal arm reaching out to catch her from falling. He looks so lost just then, his brown eyes definitely showing his 70 years for a moment.

“If you were any other broad, I’d say you were flirting with me.”

“Flirt! That is ridiculous! You are a brainwashed super soldier and I am a scientist! I don’t have time to flirt with Arrogant Yanks who think the world revolves around them even though not two months ago you tried to kill Captain America and were working with HYDRA!”

Another spot of turbulence hit her over, falling into his lap. “Fitz, fix the damn inertial dampeners!”

He kisses her quickly, too quickly for her liking, if she were being honest and she slaps him. Too quickly for his liking, too slowly for her liking.

They finish the exam, his body was doing as to be expected after being torn apart and being put back together with a metal arm. She clears him for field duty and makes him promise not to get shot by any other biochemists.

“If you ever need anything, Jem. Just ask.”

He leaves and she feels the oddest sense of loneliness while entering his information into the computer. It was strange, she was so prepared to shoot Ward, someone who was her friend even, because it would have helped him. They would have brought him in and they would make up and- things would be back to normal.

She liked how that felt. Being in control of their situation. Breaking out of her comfort zone and it was exhilarating. Even if she shot the target on accident. Later, when Fitz was snoring and Skye was talking to someone named Darcy on the phone she marched over to his cubicle and laid it all out as succinctly as possible.

The arrangement was simple-

She would do her best to help him adjust to his new life and he would teach her to be ‘badass’.

“You want me to teach you to be an assassin.”

“No, I want you to teach me how to respond to stress stimulus and be a better field agent.”

“You want me to teach you to be an assassin. Minus the killing part.”

“Exactly!”

This was either her best or worst idea ever. She wasn’t sure which.

**


End file.
